Internet Sex Crime Statistics Part 2

Internet Sex Crime Statistics Part 2

Often victims of internet sex crime are reluctant to come forward out of embarrassment or shame. Our Bellingham sexual abuse attorneys will always treat you with care, respect and understanding while fighting for a settlement on your behalf.

One in seven kids had received a sexual solicitation online. Fifty-six percent of kids who were sexually solicited online were asked to send a picture; 27 percent of the pictures were sexual in nature.

Forty-four percent of sexual solicitors were under the age of 18.

Four percent of all youth internet users received sexual solicitations that included overt invitations like being asked to meet in person or speak on the phone; some received packages or letters in the mail including money and gifts.

Four percent of youth were distressed by the sexual solicitations that they had received.

Seventy-three percent of youth who met a child predator in person or spoke to one on the phone had originally met that person online.

The most common online forums for sexual solicitations of youth:

Chat rooms (thirty-seven percent)

Instant messaging (Forty percent)

Other forums, like gaming devices (Twenty-one percent)

(Source: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2006)

Participating in risky online behavior dramatically increases the chance that that child will be contacted for an online sexual solicitation. Risky behaviors include:

Posting personal information, 50 percent increase

Communicating with online strangers, 45 percent increase

Adding strangers to online “buddy lists”, 35 percent increase

Sending personal information to strangers, 26 percent increase

Browsing X-rated or pornographic websites, 13 percent increase

Talking about sex with strangers, five percent increase

Source: Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 2007

Over time, 80 percent of online offenders against youth state their intentions and only five percent hid the fact that they were adults from their victims. (Source: Journal of Adolescent Health. 35.5., 2007)

The majority of victims of sex crimes that began through online communication were between 13 and 15 years old; 75 percent were girls and 25 percent were boys. (Source: Journal of Adolescent Health. 35.5., 2007)

Fourteen percent of students in 10th through 12th grades had either accepted an invitation to meet an online stranger in-person and/or had invited an online stranger to meet them in-person.

Fourteen percent of students in 7th through 9th grades reported that they had communicated with someone online about sexual things; 11 percent of students reported that they had been asked to talk about sexual things online; 8 percent had been exposed to nude pictures and seven percent were also asked for nude pictures of themselves online. Fifty-nine percent of these sexual abuse victims said their perpetrators were a friend they “know in-person”; 36 percent said it was someone else they know; 21 percent said the online sex offender was a classmate; 19 percent indicated the abuser was an online friend; and 16 percent said it was an online stranger. Nine percent of these children had accepted an online invitation to meet someone in-person and 10 percent had asked someone online to meet them in-person.

Thirteen percent of children in 2nd and 3rd grades stated that they had used the Internet to talk to a stranger; 11 percent reported having been asked to describe private things about their body; and 10 percent had been exposed to private things about someone else’s body.

Source: Rochester Institute for Technology, 2008

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